DOCSLIB.ORG

Pdftechlib Is a .NET Class Library Used to Create, Edit and Otherwise Manipulate PDF Documents

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Pdftechlib Is a .NET Class Library Used to Create, Edit and Otherwise Manipulate PDF Documents GETTING STARTED GUIDE PDF Technologies, Inc. Overview PDFTechLib is a .NET class library used to create, edit and otherwise manipulate PDF documents. The library does not require the use of Adobe products and is NOT a print driver. You can create stylish PDF documents with just a few lines of code. The intuitive object model allows developers to quickly adopt and understand the wealth of code samples provided with our standard package. You will be able to fill PDF e-forms, merge multiple documents, split existing PDF documents into multiple documents and finally create your own PDF documents using existing PDF documents as templates or from scratch. The library is written in 100% C# managed code. This versatile library can be used in all kinds of ASP.NET applications. It can even run in restricted hosting environments. PDFTechLib is licensed per developer and can be distributed ROYALTY FREE. Unlike other complicated and restrictive licensing plans, our simple licensing structure will allow you to quickly get started with development. Creating a PDF document is as easy as the sample code below: // If you purchased a license key, set the license like this: // PDFDocument.License = "JRO1F2MS-2021-188-J004A"; PDFDocument doc = new PDFDocument("sample.pdf"); doc.CurrentPage.Body.SetActiveFont("Arial", PDFFontStyles.Regular,12, Charset.ANSI_CHARSET, Color.Red); doc.CurrentPage.Body.AddText("Wow! What a good looking PDF Document!"); doc.Save(); 2 PDFTechLib Documentation & Getting Started Guide Copyright PDF Technologies Inc. 2015 – www.pdf-technologies.com SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS & DISTRIBUTION PDFTechLib requires the following • .Net Framework 4.0 or higher • Visual Studio 2010 or higher • Windows XP (x86) with Service Pack 3 or higher OS • 32-Bit (x86) or 64-Bit (x64) • 2 GB RAM or more HOW TO INSTALL After downloading the archive, run the installation package and follow the installation instructions. HOW TO DISTRIBUTE Programmers can distribute “PDFTechLib.dll” in their solutions. The license key must be embedded in the solution code. .Net Framework 4.0 must be present in target machines. Generally, ASP.NET Shared Hosting environments are restricted and most components cannot be run in these environments. PDFTechLib.dll library is fully functional with minimum trust level in tightly restricted ASP.net environments. The exceptions to this are listed below: • Signing PDF documents is not possible in restricted environments. • EMF, HTML, XML to PDF feature cannot be used. • Using installed system fonts is not possible because the Library requires access to the Widows/Font directory. If you wish to use these features, the library must be given Full trust Level. If you find that your code works well on your development machine and not on the deployed target machine, more than likely the problem has to do with permissions. 3 PDFTechLib Documentation & Getting Started Guide Copyright PDF Technologies Inc. 2015 – www.pdf-technologies.com ASP.NET projects can be given full trust by inserting the following section into the project’s web.config file: <system.web> <securityPolicy> <trustLevel name="Full" policyFile="internal"/> </securityPolicy> </system.web> More information on trust levels can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wyts434y.aspx For executable code or console applications, the “Run as Administrator” option must be used in restricted environments. To automate the “UAC administrator mode” you must add the following in the "App.manifest" file. 4 PDFTechLib Documentation & Getting Started Guide Copyright PDF Technologies Inc. 2015 – www.pdf-technologies.com FEATURES The main features of PDFTechLib are outlined below: FONTS Standard Fonts True Type Fonts Open Type Fonts CJK Fonts Unicode Various char set Fonts embedding TEXT GENERATION Text Format Options Multiple Columns Auto Text Justified Texts Text Boxes Tagged texts DRAWING Various Shapes Hatch Brush Gradient Brush Layers Barcodes IMAGES Vector images( EMF ,WMF support) Scalar Images Mask Transparency Stamps Watermarks INTERACTIVITY Acroforms Form filling Flatten Acroform Objects Form filling with XML, FDF or XFDF Attachments Annotations Bookmarks Actions 5 PDFTechLib Documentation & Getting Started Guide Copyright PDF Technologies Inc. 2015 – www.pdf-technologies.com PAGE ELEMENTS Margins Header and footer Unit of Measure Page Transitions Auto Page Numbering Thumbnails Tables SETTINGS Document Properties Custom Properties Page Orientation Page Sizes Viewer Preferences SECURITY Encryption and Decryption Digital Signatures Recover owner password CONVERSION AND REPORTING HTML to PDF XML to PDF Text to PDF Tiff to PDF with CCITT Fax compression Text Extraction MISC. FEATURES PDF Page Templates Split, Merge and Extract functions PDF/A-1b : 2005 Compatible 6 PDFTechLib Documentation & Getting Started Guide Copyright PDF Technologies Inc. 2015 – www.pdf-technologies.com DEVELOPER’S GUIDE The Object Model Every PDF document has a pages collection and pages in that collection. Each page in return has a body which may contain images, text, a table and annotations. For a full list of objects, methods and their properties, please refer to our online help pages. 7 PDFTechLib Documentation & Getting Started Guide Copyright PDF Technologies Inc. 2015 – www.pdf-technologies.com Getting started with your first PDF generation Creating PDF documents is a breeze with PDFTechLib. Following a series of easy steps is all you will need to create PDF document. Declare your references First, you need to declare the references to PDFTechLib. Using Visual Studio.NET, add a reference to your project to PDFTechLib.dll assembly. Add the following line at the beginning of your code using PDFTech; Create the document Now create the instance of the PDFDocument class. PDFDocument doc = new PDFDocument(“sample.pdf” ); Start adding content After creating the page, you need to add content. To do this set the properties of the body object. By setting the Body properties you can render text and images on the page. Here is how to accomplish this: doc.CurrentPage.Body.SetActiveFont("Arial",PDFFontStyles.Regular,12, Charset.ANSI_CHARSET, Color.Red); doc.CurrentPage.Body.AddText("Wow. That was easy!"); //now save the document doc.Save(); 8 PDFTechLib Documentation & Getting Started Guide Copyright PDF Technologies Inc. 2015 – www.pdf-technologies.com Creating Content PDFTechLib contains a wide array of tools and methods to create content on a PDF page. Content is images, text, shapes, curves, tables and lines. The text can be aligned in any direction giving you the power to create effective documents. When creating content on a page you can rely on the default coordinates or take into account the margin system. Read more about this in the “Page Margins” section. Creating PDF/A compliant content PDF/A is in fact a subset of PDF, leaving out PDF features not suited to long-term archiving. In addition, the standard places requirements on software products that read PDF/A files. A "conforming reader" must follow certain rules including following color management guidelines, using embedded fonts for rendering, and making annotation content available to users. The Standard does not define an archiving strategy or the goals of an archiving system. It identifies a "profile" for electronic documents that ensures the documents can be reproduced the exact same way in years to come. A key element to this reproducibility is the requirement for PDF/A documents to be 100 % self-contained. All of the information necessary for displaying the document in the same manner every time is embedded in the file. This includes, but is not limited to, all content (text, raster images and vector graphics), fonts, and color information. A PDF/A document is not permitted to be reliant on information from external sources (e.g. font programs and hyperlinks). Source: Wikipedia Sample code: PDFCreationOptions options = new PDFCreationOptions(); //Set the Compliance standard for PDF/A options.ComplianceStandard = PDFStandards.PDFA1b; PDFDocument MyPDF = new PDFDocument("PDFA.pdf", options); MyPDF.CurrentPage.Body.AddText("This creates a PDF/A document."); //Incompliant actions will throw exceptions when you call save method. Example: Encryption transparent images etc. Most of the PDF/A requirements will be taken care of automatically by the library. Such as font embedding, ICC Profiles etc. MyPDF.Save(); 9 PDFTechLib Documentation & Getting Started Guide Copyright PDF Technologies Inc. 2015 – www.pdf-technologies.com Flowing Text and Column Support Our library exposes many unique methods to allow programmers who wish to generate long and content rich documents. PDF documents offer a unique versatility in Content Management scenarios where documents need to be generated based on complex business rules. Insurance policies, corporate documents etc. are all generated based on rules or situations. PDFTechLib does not use the page body as a graphical canvas object. All you have to do is create the object, set page size and column count, optionally set page margins, optionally set active font and size, then start adding text or tagged text or image(s) as required. All formatting, word wrapping, placing text to columns, creating paragraphs will be done by the library. You do not need to calculate any complex positioning. The “AddText” and “AddTaggedText” methods allow you to add text form the cursor position. Sample: PDFCreationOptions options = new PDFCreationOptions(); options.PageSize = PDFPageSize.A4; options.SetMargin(50, 70, 50,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • First Read Rate Analysis of 2D-Barcodes for Camera Phone Applications As a Ubiquitous Computing Tool
    Edith Cowan University Research Online ECU Publications Pre. 2011 2007 First Read Rate Analysis of 2D-Barcodes for Camera Phone Applications as a Ubiquitous Computing Tool Hiroko Kato Edith Cowan University Keng T. Tan Edith Cowan University Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworks Part of the Engineering Commons 10.1109/TENCON.2007.4428778 This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of: Kato, H., & Tan, K. (2007). First read rate analysis of 2D-barcodes for camera phone applications as a ubiquitous computing tool. Proceedings of IEEE Tencon (IEEE Region 10 Conference). (pp. 1-4). Taipei, Taiwan. IEEE. Available here © 2007 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. This Conference Proceeding is posted at Research Online. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworks/4953 First read rate analysis of 2D-barcodes for camera phone applications as a ubiquitous computing tool. H. Kato and K.T. Tan School of Computer Science and Information Science Edith Cowan University 2 Bradford Street Mount Lawley, WA 6050 AUSTRALIA Abstract- This paper presents a detailed study on the first read In this paper, we present key factors that could enhance the rate (FRR) of seven 2D-barcodes currently used for camera phone robustness and usability of a 2D-barcode system2 based on our applications.
    [Show full text]
  • Generalized Fibonacci Numbers and Applications
    Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics San Antonio, TX, USA - October 2009 Generalized Fibonacci Numbers and Applications Sarkis Agaian Stanford University Student Member, IEEE [email protected] Abstract— The present paper relates to the methods for data efficient, accessible, and secure. Traditionally, barcodes have encoding and the reading of coded information represented by represented data in the widths and spacings of black parallel colored (including monochrome/black, gray) symbols (bars, lines. They are now referred to as linear or 1D (1 dimensional) triangles, circles, or other symbols). It also introduces new barcodes or symbologies. Since such barcodes use two types algorithms for generating secure, reliable, and high capacity of symbol elements, however, they carry a limited amount of color barcodes by using so called weighted n-dimensional random Fibonacci number based representations of data. The information with few security features. As a result, other types representation, symbols, and colors can be used as encryption of symbologies, most notably 2-D and color barcodes, have keys that can be encoded into barcodes, thus eliminating the been developed to offer more capabilities than their linear direct dependence on cryptographic techniques. To supply an counterpart [7]. extra layer of security, one may encrypt given data using different types of encryption methods. 2D barcodes can be broadly classified as either stacked symbology or matrix code. Stacked symbology, also called Keywords—Color barcode, Weighted n-dimensional random multi-row code, is created by “stacking” a series of linear Fibonacci sequences, Fibonacci numbers, Fibonacci p-code, barcode on top of each other.
    [Show full text]
  • © in This Web Service Cambridge University Press
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-88839-4 - Barcodes for Mobile Devices Hiroko Kato, Keng T. Tan and Douglas Chai Index More information Index AC coefficient, 168, 169 biometric data, 66, 67, 92, 123 access control, 66 biometric encryption key, 67 Active Book, 98 bitmap (BMP), 166 Active CyberCode, 104, 105 bitwise-XOR operations, 143 Active TRIPboard, 107 blob, 70, 71, 73, 145 adaptive thresholding, 106, 172–174, 176 block code, 131 additive colour space, 124, 160, 161 blog, 31, 45, 115 Advanced Television Systems Committee Bluetooth, 76, 117–119 (ATSC), 131 Bluetooth device address (BD_ADDR), 118 Air Transport Association (ATA), 23, 60 Bose–Chaudhuri–Hochquenghem (BCH) code, 131 alignment failure, 203, 207, 210, 211, 213 bouse, 89 alignment pattern, 52–54, 147 brightness coordinate in colour space, 124 American National Standards Institute (ANSI), 61 bull’s eye, 12, 13, 36, 76, 145 American Standard Code for Information burst error, 54, 131, 137, 140, 141 Interchange (ASCII), 22–24, 33, 35, 36 business card scanner, 91 anti-aliasing, 91, 123, 147 byte compaction mode, 33 application identifier (AI), 41–43 application programming interface (API), 95 area sensor, 28 central circular finder pattern, 146, 155 arm in mCode symbol, 70 centre guard pattern, 24, 112 associative law, 132 charge coupled device (CCD), 12, 28, 31, 45, 58, 89, au (KDDI), 51 91, 97, 110, 122, 149, 158, 214, 215 augmented reality (AR), 31, 94, 97–99, 103–105, 108, 109, 121, 127 camera, 32, 37, 48, 58, 60, 69, 76, 78, 92, 100, Australian Communications and Media Authority
    [Show full text]
  • Imageman.Net Getting Started
    ImageMan.Net Getting Started 1 ImageMan.Net Version 3 The ImageMan.Net product includes fully managed .Net components providing an easy to use, yet rich imaging toolkit. Fully Managed Assemblies support X-Copy deployment and do not use COM Support for reading/writing many image formats including TIFF, BMP, DIB, RLE, PCX, DCX, TGA, PCX, DCX, JPG, JPEG 2000, PNG, GIF, EMF, WMF, PDF(with optional PDF Export/Import Addon Options), even plug in your own image codecs Object oriented architecture simplifies development. High level functionality allows for quick development while low level classes provide ultimate control Works with the ImageMan.Net Twain controls to easily scan from Twain compatible scanners, cameras and frame grabbers Winforms Viewer, File Open, Thumbnail Viewer, Annotation and Annotation Toolstrip controls Barcode creation and recognition support for 1-d and 2-d barcodes symbologies including QR, Datamatrix, 3 of 9, Codabar, PDF417, Code 3 of 9, Code 3 of 9 Extended, Code 93, EAN-8, EAN-13, UPC-A, UPC-E, Aztec, Interleaved 2 of 5, Codabar and more Document Edition includes royalty free OCR, Annotations and document processing commands including despeckle, border removal, border cleanup and more Supports building client side Winforms and ASP.Net server side applications 32 & 64 bit assemblies for .Net 2.0, .Net 3.x and 4.x Support for Visual Studio 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013 Context Sensitive Online Help and Documentation Backed up by Data Techniques professional support staff 1 ImageMan.Net Getting Started ImageMan.Net Getting Started 2 What's New in Version 3 What's new in the Summer Release PDFEncoder & OCR Engine Enhanced the Searchable PDF Support by assuring that the searchable text lines up with the raster image content.
    [Show full text]
  • 3. Using Zint Barcode Studio Below Is a Brief Guide to Zint Barcode Studio Which Is the Graphical User Interface for the Zint Package
    Zint Barcode Generator and Zint Barcode Studio User Manual This document is a backup of the user manual information which was formerly held at the website http://www.zint.org.uk. You are free to distribute this document, copy it or any part of it and reproduce it by any means or in any medium as you see fit as long as you also acknowledge the fact that it is covered by the following copyright: © Robin Stuart 2006 – 2011 (In other words I'm happy for you to treat it as a public domain document as long as you don't take credit for it!) This version of the manual relates to Zint version 2.4.2. 1. Introduction The Zint project aims to provide a complete cross-platform open source barcode generating solution. The package currently consists of a Qt based GUI, a command line executable and a library with an API to allow developers access to the capabilities of Zint. It is hoped that Zint provides a solution which is flexible enough for professional users while at the same time takes care of as much of the processing as possible to allow easy translation from input data to barcode image. The library which forms the main component of the Zint project is currently able to encode data in over 50 barcode symbologies (types of barcode), for each of which it is possible to translate that data from either Unicode (UTF-8) or a raw 8-bit data stream. The image can be rendered as either a Portable Network Graphic (PNG) image, as Encapsulated Post Script (EPS) or as a Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG).
    [Show full text]
  • Bagging Equipment Thermal Ribbon Printers
    Bagging Equipment Thermal Ribbon Printers For printing various data + Barcodes, code, ingredients, product names etc onto film prior to bagging The high performance, low cost thermal transfer printers are versatile enough for printing fixed and variable text, data and graphics. It is ideal for reproducing bar codes, real time, sell-by dates, batch numbers, prices, source codes and much more. Two component models of brackets (Intermittent & Continuous) can be easily integrated to the machines such as vertical and horizontal form-fill-seal systems, primary labellers, thermo formers and overwrapping equipment. The units are suitable for all intermittent and continuous applications within the food, pharmaceutical cosmetics and automobile spare parts industries has the capability to code all kinds of 1D barcodes and 2D data matrix codes. Features Intermediate and continuous models available Patented long life mechanical design needs no maintenance 107mm – 75mm models for Intermittent print area 600 m. Ribbon Capacity 300 dpi (12 dot/inch) Print Quality Up to 400mm per/second print speed Large memory for all label formats to be stored locally The USB can be used to transfer messages between printers and through computer too Loynds International Ltd Units 2-8 Arkwright Court | Blackpool and Fylde Industrial Estate | Blackpool, England, FY4 5DR T: +44 (0)1253882961 | E: [email protected] | W: www.loynds.co.uk Model 32 C 32-50 I 53-50 I 32 C 32-70 I 53 C 53-70 I 53-125 I 107 C 107-75 I 107-125 I 107mm x 125mm 32mm x 125mm 53mm x 125mm (Standard) (Standard) (Standard) 107mm x 32mm x 250mm 53mm x 250mm 250mm 107mm x Print Area 32mm x 125mm 32mm x 50mm 53mm x 50mm (Optional) 32mm x 70mm (Optional) 53mm x 70mm 53mm x 125mm (Optional) 107mm x 75mm 125mm Max.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction Into Barcodes BY
    WWW.BYTESCOUT.COM Introduction Into Barcodes BY ByteScout 2014 An introduction to the world of barcodes. Written for the Business Owners and Software Developers who want to get basic understanding of barcodes. Table of Contents Preface _____________________________________________________________________ iii 1. Introduction ______________________________________________________________ 1 1.1 What are barcodes? __________________________________________________________ 1 1.2 Why use barcodes? __________________________________________________________ 1 1.3 What are applications of barcodes? _____________________________________________ 2 2. Categories of barcodes _____________________________________________________ 2 2.1 One Dimensional Barcodes ____________________________________________________ 3 2.2 Two Dimensional Barcodes ____________________________________________________ 3 3. One Dimensional/ Linear Barcodes ___________________________________________ 4 3.1 Code 39 ____________________________________________________________________ 4 3.2 Code 93 ____________________________________________________________________ 5 3.3 Code 128 ___________________________________________________________________ 6 3.4 EAN 13 _____________________________________________________________________ 7 3.5 EAN 14 _____________________________________________________________________ 9 3.6 EAN2 EAN5 and Their Usage with EAN13 ________________________________________ 10 3.7 Codabar Barcode ___________________________________________________________ 12
    [Show full text]
  • Unsynchronized 4D Barcodes Coding and Decoding Time-Multiplexed 2D Colorcodes
    Unsynchronized 4D Barcodes Coding and Decoding Time-Multiplexed 2D Colorcodes Tobias Langlotz and Oliver Bimber? Bauhaus-University Weimar Abstract. We present a novel technique for optical data transfer be- tween public displays and mobile devices based on unsynchronized 4D barcodes. We assume that no direct (electromagnetic or other) connec- tion between the devices can exist. Time-multiplexed, 2D color barcodes are displayed on screens and recorded with camera equipped mobile phones. This allows to transmit information optically between both de- vices. Our approach maximizes the data throughput and the robustness of the barcode recognition, while no immediate synchronization exists. Although the transfer rate is much smaller than it can be achieved with electromagnetic techniques (e.g., Bluetooth or WiFi), we envision to ap- ply such a technique wherever no direct connection is available. 4D bar- codes can, for instance, be integrated into public web-pages, movie se- quences, advertisement presentations or information displays, and they encode and transmit more information than possible with single 2D or 3D barcodes. 1 Introduction and Motivation Encoding and decoding digital information into printed two dimensional bar- codes becomes more and more popular. They are used in advertisements, on business cards or e-tickets, or for referencing to web-pages as in Semapedia (www.semapedia.org). The amount of information that can be decoded robustly from a 2D barcode with ordinary mobile devices, such as mobile phones, is usu- ally restricted to several characters only. Thus, usually IDs, URLs or simple addresses are encoded. Yet, professional industrial scanners are able to decode a much larger amount of characters (several thousands) with an acceptable re- liability.
    [Show full text]
  • Technical White Paper Choosing the Best 2D Barcode Format for Mobile
    Semacode Technical White Paper Technical white paper Copyright © 2006 Semacode 2006-07-15 Choosing the best 2D barcode format for mobile apps Choosing the best two-dimensional barcode format for mobile applications is a difficult decision. There are many different formats which vary over a wide range of axes—how much data they can store, whether or not they are standards, how large they are for a given amount of data. This paper provides a technical comparison of the different for- mats’ strengths and weaknesses. Through a combination of our own and independent third-party analysis, we demonstrate that Data Matrix, the format chosen by Semacode, is the best choice. An independent third-party assessment of Data Matrix and QR Code from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)’s R9 Automatic Data Capture Committee was made for the IEC 62090 committee. We include data and information from that document. Page 1 of 7 Choosing the best 2D barcode format for mobile apps Semacode Technical White Paper Data Matrix vs. QR Code Data Matrix and QR Code are both 2D barcode formats available as open standards. Data Matrix was designed in 1989, and standardized by partners including NASA, US DoD, and major industries such as electronics, pharma and postal marking. Although QR was developed later (1994) by Japanese company Denso, it had only one unique fea- ture, to easily encode Japanese kana characters. Although Data Matrix is now used in Japan, QR Code has never seen any significant use outside of Japan. Semacode uses the Data Matrix barcode format. This is the “physical layer” of the semacode system, which also includes the use of URLs as a standard application addressing system.
    [Show full text]
  • An M-Learning System Based on Mobile Phones and Quick Response Codes
    Journal of Computer Science 7 (3): 427-430, 2011 ISSN 1549-3636 © 2011 Science Publications An M-Learning System Based on Mobile Phones and Quick Response Codes Hend S. Al-Khalifa Department of Information Technology, College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Abstract: Problem statement: Many instructors in academia wish to know how much their students understand the content of the lecture; however, doing this manually will be very difficult and time consuming. Similarly, most students have communication problems with their instructors and they wish if they can ask their questions without any fear. So a need for a technology to bridge these gaps is becoming apparent in our rapidly changing world. Approach: The development and implementation of a Mobile Snapshot Response system, which uses the camera integrated within mobile phones and QR Codes to leverage student interaction in the classroom. The potential objective of the system is to increase the connectivity between the instructor and the student by offering the student the opportunity to evaluate the lecture content and send inquires to the instructor after class. Results: The Mobile Snapshot Response system has been developed, implemented and tested and user evaluation has proved the system’s ease of use. Conclusions: The mobile snapshot response system can help in improving the communications between teachers and their students and in providing students with the ability to raise questions and comments without embarrassment. Moreover, the students will be able to answer short assessments at the end of each class in an easy and convenient way.
    [Show full text]
  • Getting Started with the Mobile Web
    Chapter X6 On the Move with the Mobile Web: Libraries and Mobile Technologies Ellyssa Kroski Getting Started with the Mobile Web earning about the mobile Web and keeping abreast of new developments is easier than ever, as there Forums (cont.) Lare scores of resources available on the Internet per- taining to upcoming application launches, newly designed EverythingiCafe Web sites, emerging technologies and standards, and www.everythingicafe.com cutting-edge devices. Nokia N95 Users Forum www.n95users.com/forum Forums Many of today’s major mobile devices have associated Blogs user forums for exchanging tips and information within the community of owners. These are incredibly useful These blogs are of interest to libraries thinking of estab- resources for finding out about everything from compatible lishing a mobile Web presence: memory cards to how to customize wallpaper and themes Library Technology ReportsLibrary Technology for your model phone. The Everything family of Web sites • MobileCrunch—Part of the TechCrunch network, this offers guides to specific phone types, including the Treo, blog reports breaking news from the mobile realm about BlackBerry, Q, iPhone and Touch, and Centro. It has excel- devices, carriers, applications and more. lent forums dedicated to specific models. A Google search • Engadget Mobile—Weblogs, Inc’s mobile offering, for message boards related to a specific phone type will this online journal delivers cutting-edge mobile news often yield relevant results. For example, searching for on a daily basis. “N95 forum” will yield the Nokia N95 Users Forum. • Gizmodo—Part of the Gawker Media family, Gizmodo reports on gadgets and mobile technologies.
    [Show full text]
  • Cell Phone-Based Wayfinding for the Visually Impaired
    Cell Phone-based Wayfinding for the Visually Impaired James Coughlan1, Roberto Manduchi2, and Huiying Shen1 1 Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute 2318 Fillmore Street San Francisco, CA 94115 {coughlan,hshen}@ski.org 2 University of California, Santa Cruz 1156 High Street Santa Cruz, CA 95064 [email protected] Abstract. A major challenge faced by the blind and visually impaired population is that of wayfinding – the ability of a person to find his or her way to a given destination. We propose a new wayfinding aid based on a camera cell phone, which is held by the user to find and read aloud specially designed machine-readable signs in the environment (labeling locations such as offices and restrooms). Our main technical innovation is that we have designed these machine-readable signs to be detected and located in fractions of a second on the cell phone CPU, even at a distance of several meters. A linear barcode printed on the sign is read using novel decoding algorithms that are robust to noisy images. The information read from the barcode is then read aloud using pre-recorded or synthetic speech. We have implemented a prototype system on the Nokia 7610 cell phone, and preliminary experiments with blind subjects demonstrate the feasibility of using the system as a real-time wayfinding aid. 2 1 Introduction There are nearly 1 million legally blind persons in the United States, and up to 10 million with significant visual impairments. A major challenge faced by this population is that of wayfinding – the ability of a person to find his or her way to a given destination.
    [Show full text]